The Science of Consciousness

About this event

Please note. Due to a scheduling mistake. We're skipping a week. Now 11-11 Our purpose in this group is to explore the science of consciousness, drawing from sources that range from neuroscience to cognitive psychology to philosophy of mind. Although we will occasionally draw from the insights of spiritual introspective traditions, our focus here will be on what can be supported by the best current science regarding how the mind supervenes on the brain. Could there be an integrated kind of bodily self-consciousness, maybe a mobile body fully available for volitional control, or a paralyzed body which in its entirety is a phenomenal confabulation – in short, a hallucinated and bodily self at the same time? Is it conceivable that something like a “globalized phantom-limb experience”,the experience of a phantom body could emerge in a human subject? The answer is yes. Self-representation is a useful Cartesian fiction: an ultimately false representation of a simple and enduring substance to which attributes are bound which serves to integrate and unify cognitive processing across levels and domains. Ego dissolution experiences reveal that the self-model plays an important binding function in cognitive processing, but the self does not exist. This week we will consider the following two papers: Self Unbound. Ego Dissolution in Psychedelic Experience by Chris Letheby & Philip Gerrans and Out-of-Body Experiences: Phenomenology, Psychology and Neuroscience by Thomas Metzinger. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6007152/ & https://philpapers.org/archive/METOEA